


Water, Water

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [72]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When water appears in a surprising location near Lester’s cottage in the Mendip Hills, Lyle is called out to investigate. His mother decides to go along for the ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lester turned over in bed, automatically seeking his lover’s warm body. When he failed to make the expected contact a glance at the clock told him that it was barely 7am. He hadn’t registered Lyle getting up, but the soldier could move like a cat in the dark, so that was hardly surprising. Lyle was not known for early rising when he was off-duty but he’d been on edge the previous night and had no doubt slept badly. Lester slipped out from under the duvet, grabbed his dressing gown from the back of the door and slid his feet into a pair of battered old slippers before going in search of coffee.

The door of the guest bedroom was open and the room was empty. It looked very much like Lyle wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad night, and in Julia Denton’s case that was hardly surprising. Lyle’s mother had been drugged, raped and left for dead in the Cretaceous only two days previously. To Lester’s surprise, rather than returning to her home in Spain, she had expressed a wish to spend a few days at his cottage on the Mendips. Her fourth husband, retired investment banker Henry Rossington, was flying into Bristol airport later that morning to join her.

Julia, wearing a bright green silk kimono, was leaning against the work surface in the kitchen watching her son make coffee. Lyle appeared to be the only person in the house who was actually dressed, and from the look of his sweat-soaked teeshirt and loose, muddy trousers, he’d already been out for a run.

“Did the old harridan wake you up, sweetheart?” Lyle asked solicitously, reaching out for an extra mug. “I’ve told her we’ll make her sleep in the garage if she keeps us awake again with her smoker’s cough.”

“I knew I’d made a mistake not drowning him at birth,” Julia commented. “Good morning, James. If you want to kiss the brat I imagine I can manage to avert my maternal eyes.”

“Most certainly not, I can smell him from here. I have no wish to get any closer until he’s used the shower. Good morning, Julia,” he added as he accepted the coffee Lyle was holding out to him. For all the banter between Lyle and his mother, Lester knew perfectly well that Lyle loved her deeply and it was their almost telepathic bond that had alerted the soldier to the fact that she was in serious trouble. Lester didn’t profess to understand how Lyle’s preternatural danger sense worked but he’d seen enough examples of it to have been willing to stake his career on his lover’s ability to know when something was going badly wrong, and Lyle’s sixth sense hadn’t lied.

A hunting party consisting of a group of super-rich and influential men and women, including the ex-Home Secretary’s husband, had been taken into the past by a man called Ed Mason, who had been running probably the most expensive and exclusive package tours the world had ever known.

Julia Denton, regardless of having retired from journalism, had been making her own investigations into Mason’s activities and had gone undercover, with potentially fatal results. Although the rescue mission had been successful, several people – including Mason – had died, leaving Lester with a mopping up operation that had started with the resignation of the Home Secretary, who had committed political suicide by getting caught passing confidential information about the anomaly project to her husband and Mason. On top of that, the ARC team had now acquired the use of Farnley Hall, Mason’s stately home, which had come complete with what appeared to be a permanently open anomaly and an exotic zoo housing numerous creatures gathered from several different eras.

Lester had promptly put Abby Maitland in charge of the zoo, with instructions to move the inhabitants of the ARC’s somewhat more makeshift menagerie there as quickly as possible. He’d also left Nick Cutter and Connor Temple doing their best to absorb the information Mason had gathered on the open anomaly, shielded by an ingenious Faraday Cage inside an earth mound. That anomaly led to an even more intriguing cluster of anomalies, some stable, some apparently more ephemeral.

Farnley Hall, together with its employees and other inhabitants, had now officially become part of the anomaly project, bringing with it a whole raft of logistical nightmares that no doubt Claudia Brown and Lester’s ever-efficient secretary, Lorraine Wickes, were still attempting to untangle. By now they had almost certainly distributed enough copies of the Official Secrets Act to wallpaper every room in the hall.

Lester intended to keep in regular contact with his staff over the course of the week, but for once he’d put his private life before the demands of his job and had insisted on accompanying Lyle and his mother to Drove Cottage. Ryan and Stringer had been adamant that they had sufficient men to deal with any emergencies and that they could spare Lyle for a few days at the very least. Claudia and Lorraine had been equally insistent that they could manage without him and to their surprise, he hadn’t argued.

He sipped the coffee Lyle had handed to him and remarked, “Henry will be arriving at Lulsgate at 11.30. Do you want to pick him up, wombat, or shall I?”

“Can I take the Merc?” Lyle asked, an amused gleam in his hazel eyes.

“Most certainly not. Your driving style, Mendip lanes and my pride and joy do not mix.”

“Don’t you trust me, my little pig-footed bandicoot?”

Lester blinked in surprise. They’d been trying out a new line in endearments recently, and he strongly suspected Lyle of cheating by Googling and memorising a list of Australian marsupials, but he wasn’t going to hand over victory on a plate by querying Lyle’s choice of words, although he might go as far as checking up on him later. Pig-footed bandicoot sounded wholly improbable even by their standards, but he wasn’t sure enough of his ground to call foul.

“No, I most certainly do not trust you with my baby,” he said pointedly. “Now bugger off and have a shower while I cook breakfast.” He smiled at their houseguest. “Can I tempt you to bacon and eggs cooked by my own fair hand, Julia?”

“You’re a peach among men, James. I don’t suppose you’d consider dumping that ungrateful little sod and becoming my bit on the side instead, would you?”

Lyle wandered past, running his hand lightly over Lester’s arse. “Careful, darling, she’s never got her claws into a man with a title before, but there’s a first time for everything.”

Julia watched thoughtfully as her son disappeared up the stairs. A few moments later, the gurgle of water in the pipes signified that the en suite shower was in use.

“You love him, don’t you, James?” she commented, pouring herself another mug of strong, black coffee.

“Yes. And I’ve even abandoned my carefully cultivated air of emotional repression to apprise him of that fact. And so do you, so I suspect that means we have quite a lot in common.” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Are you going to deliver a suitably threatening version of the ‘if you hurt him it’ll be the last thing you ever do’ speech?”

Julia smiled and for once it lacked the sharp edge of humour that he’d come to associate with her. “No, although at one time I was considering subjecting him to that where you were concerned, but I don’t think it’s necessary now, do you? Anyone with half a brain can tell that you’re both besotted with each other.”

“Besotted?” Lester feigned horror but even he knew it was a half-hearted attempt.

Her smile widened and she reached out with red-painted nails to pinch his cheek. “Besotted,” she said firmly. “Your little project seems to be uncommonly good at team-building, doesn’t it? Unless I’m very much mistaken, the formidable Captain Ryan and the impossibly pretty Stephen Hart appear to be an item and even your ice-maiden of a secretary was a bit moist-eyed when she got back from the hospital the other night. Which one is she shagging?”

“The green-eyed psycho with the knives,” Lester said and had the satisfaction of seeing Julia look stunned. As he flipped the bacon over with a spatula, he wondered if she’d noticed the budding relationship between Abby and Captain Stringer, and the way Cutter and Claudia were still dancing around each other like a couple of school kids.

He’d long since given up worrying about the number of couples the anomaly project seemed to be generating. In a high-stress environment shrouded in secrecy from the outside world that sort of pairing off was almost inevitable and at least it made pillow-talk less problematic than it had been for the former Home Secretary. In her case it had led to her resignation and Lester was still waiting to hear who would be taking over from her.

Breakfast consisted of several rashers of bacon accompanied by two eggs each and several thick slabs of bread and butter washed down by yet more coffee. There appeared to be nothing wrong with Julia’s appetite as she shovelled down the food with almost as much alacrity as her son before retiring outside for a cigarette, declaring that she knew Lester would hate to have a guest do the washing up so she’d save him the trouble of declining her offer.

As Lester cleared away the plates, Lyle stepped up behind him and pulled him into a hug, nuzzling several days’ growth of stubble against his cheek. “Hopefully Henry will be able to talk her into seeing someone. She agreed to let Ditzy run some tests to make sure she hasn’t picked up anything nasty from that little scumbag Harris, but that was all.”

Lester pressed back against the warmth of his lover’s body. “Don’t get your hopes up, Jon. She’s about as likely to want to talk about this with anyone as you were. You two are far too alike.”

“I don’t smoke 30 a day and paint my toenails crimson!”

“No, but you do drink whisky and refuse to talk about your problems.”

Lyle sighed and tightened his arms around Lester’s waist. “In the interests of domestic harmony I’ll ignore that cheap jibe. Shall we take them to the Hunter’s for lunch? It’ll be easier than amateur psychoanalysis.”

“And more filling,” Lester conceded. “We’ll feed her Roger’s faggot and peas. That’ll put hairs on her chest.”

“And it’ll take her mind off everything apart from her bowels,” Lyle said. “If I know my sainted parent she’ll insist on meeting Henry in there so he can’t make a fuss when he sees her.”

“He knows her better than that, surely?”

“I know that, you know that, Henry knows that, but mother prefers not to leave these things to chance. You pick Henry up and I’ll take her to the pub. Unless it pisses down, we can go for a walk this afternoon. That’ll give her something else to complain about.”

Lester twisted around in Lyle’s arms and pressed a light kiss to his lover’s lips. “Ditzy’s right, Jon, she’s a tough old bird. She’ll come through this.”

He could feel some of the tension leave Lyle’s body as the soldier allowed himself to relax into the embrace. “I know that,” Lyle said. “But you didn’t see her the way I did, James. She looked…” Lyle groped for right word and finally settled on, “Broken. I know she’d been drugged, but…”

Lester held him close, knowing that any words of comfort he might offer would sound hollow to Lyle’s ears. Lyle seen his mother in the immediate aftermath of a brutal assault and he would have to come to terms with that in his own way. The soldier was no stranger to rape, and he also needed to deal with the uncomfortable fact that the bond between them bit two ways. Lyle had recently discovered to his cost that he was as aware of his mother’s problems as she was of his, and it had thrown into sharp relief what Julia must have endured during some of his more hair-raising escapades.

“Stop trying to excite my passions, oh most endearing of echidnas,” Lester said. “I refuse to be caught in a clinch with you in the kitchen. It lacks dignity.”

“That’s not what you said when I shagged you on top of the kitchen table.” Lyle ran his hands down over Lester’s arse and ground their hips together suggestively. “And it’s your shout for lunch; an echidna’s an egg-laying mammal, not a marsupial.”

Lester nipped Lyle’s bottom lip lightly. “Stop rubbing yourself off on me, you shameless hussy. We never specified marsupials. I believe the only requirement was a place of residence in the southern hemisphere. That means it’s still your turn to buy lunch.”

* * * * *

“One chilli, hounds and beans, a faggot and peas, and a cauliflower cheese, please, Jackie.” Lyle placed the order at the bar while his mother and her husband stared around them in amazement at what was, in Lester’s opinion, probably one of the last genuinely unspoiled pubs left in the country.

The Hunter’s Lodge Inn was an unprepossessing building on top of the Mendip Hills, within easy walking distance of Drove Cottage. The inn was long, low and as grey as a winter sky, with a cheerless exterior that didn’t encourage passing trade to investigate further, thus preserving its secrets. Its customers were drawn heavily from the large community of cavers – like Lyle – who opted to spend their leisure time exploring the extensive network of caves that honeycombed the ancient landscape. The interior was like something from a bygone age. The floor was flagged with grey limestone. Genuine horse brasses nestled amongst faded pictures of caves and jostled for position with such things as the winner’s trophy in the local shove ha’penny tournament and a large pink origami pig’s head that had been on the wall for as long as Lester could remember.

He and Lyle exchanged greetings with a couple of cavers and some other locals and, armed with their drinks, took up residence at a long table set in what had once been an old fireplace.

“Thank you, Jon,” Henry Rossington said, raising his glass of Potholer bitter to his stepson in salute. “Despite what your mother says, you are an officer and a gentleman.”

Lyle grinned. “Don’t thank me. She’ll be farting like a trooper for the rest of the day after one of Roger’s faggot and peas.”

“I’ll have you know I have a cast-iron stomach,” his mother declared. “I don’t even fart after eating those refried beans in Henry’s favourite Mexican restaurant.”

Lyle cultivated a pained expression. “James, do other people’s mothers talk in a loud voice in public places about farting?”

“Probably not, but I now understand where you get it from, cherub,” Lester said, lightly patting the back of Lyle’s hand. They were all doing their best to keep up the charade that this was just any other lunchtime outing to the pub. As Lyle had predicted, Julia had insisted on her reunion with her husband taking place in the pub, on neutral ground, so Lester had taken her husband straight there from Bristol airport.

The 15-minute drive across the Mendips had given him the opportunity to bring Henry up to speed on Julia’s antics, but when he’d reached the crux of the story, the look of naked pain on Henry Rossington’s patrician face had made him pull the car to the side of the road and wait for the man to regain his composure before they moved on again. Henry had asked very few questions, even when Lester had disclosed the exact nature of the hunting party that his wife had infiltrated. He had obviously presumed the two million pound price tag for the venture had been some indication that she’d gone somewhere more exotic than a trip to the Serengeti or the Galapagos. Lester was sure there would be plenty of questions later, but at that stage all Henry had wanted was the assurance that his wife really was alive.

Henry’s reunion with his wife had been characterised by all the reserve that Lester was familiar with from his own experiences with her son. Julia had smiled, kissed her husband lightly on the lips and enquired about his flight, which had been as personal as the exchange had got. Henry had done nothing more demonstrative than run the backs of his fingers lightly down her tanned cheek, but Lester had noted with a degree of relief that she’d not shied away from his touch.

While they tucked into their lunch, the conversation remained equally light, with nothing deeper being discussed than plans for where to go for a walk. Henry Rossington, a retired investment banker with a fortune that Lyle had told him ran to something over 30 million pounds, seemed perfectly at home in the flag-floored pub eating sausages wrapped in pastry – known locally as hounds, for some reason Lester had never entirely understood – surrounded by a sea of baked beans. His wife was tucking into a large, round faggot swimming in gravy mixed with processed peas. In comparison, Lyle’s homemade chilli paled into insignificance, as did Lester’s own meal of a particularly excellent cauliflower cheese.

“Jon goes caving after one of those,” Lester remarked, as Julia finally laid down her fork in an empty bowl.

“You’re both clinically insane,” Julia commented. “But then so was his father, only he went up mountains rather than burrowed around inside them.”

Lyle’s father, a mountaineer who had scaled the highest peaks in Europe by the age of 22 and attained the summit of Everest without the use of oxygen as part of a combined services expedition, had been killed by an IRA sniper in Belfast at the same age Lyle now was. His son had been ten at the time. The young Jon Lyle had no doubt made his mother’s heart sink by vowing to follow his father into the army but to her credit, Julia had made no move to influence her son’s choice of career, even knowing that that he stood a good chance of following his father into an early grave. Lester now knew from his own experience how hard it could be to live under that sort of shadow.

“I’m trying to return to the womb, mother,” Lyle announced, draining his beer glass and looking hopefully at Lester for a refill. “Or at least that’s what my last shrink claimed. He’d obviously not met you,” Lyle added, his hazel eyes, the mirror image of Julia’s, shining with amusement.

Julia Denton shuddered. “Dear God, it was bad enough expelling you the first time. You were a week overdue and when you did decide to put in an appearance I was in labour for 32 hours. I was certain you’d staged a bloody sit-in or something.”

“So that’s why he’s always bloody late,” Lester commented, rounding up their glasses. “Same again?”

The faint ringing of a telephone disturbed the relative silence of the pub and the landlord bustled off to answer it as Lester took their bowls and plates back up to the bar. A few moments later, Roger Dors came back with somewhat more alacrity than he’d left, a serious expression on his round, genial face.

“Jon, you’re wanted. There’s a problem over at Westbury Quarry. Midge Taylor needs a diver.”

Lyle’s eyes widened. “What the hell does she want a diver for? The place is bone dry.”

“Ain’t now,” Roger replied laconically. “It’s 40 feet deep in water and has been since last night.”


	2. Chapter 2

In just under 15 minutes Lyle had loaded a vast amount of diving gear into the back of the Range Rover and they were now driving across the hill at speed. They’d added Lester’s cave diving kit as well, just in case Lyle needed back-up. Mobile phone reception on the Mendips was patchy to say the least, so they had no idea what had happened to initiate a rescue call-out that needed a diver in such an unlikely location.

Julia and Henry had insisted on accompanying them. Lester was pleased to note that neither mother nor son appeared to be suffering any precognitive anxiety. Thumbs remained unscratched, which was always a good sign.

Westbury Quarry was now disused, but when it was working it had supplied millions of tons of limestone a year for use in road building and other construction projects. In 1969, a landslip had revealed evidence of an ancient cave system containing a large quantity of animal bones dating back to the Early Pleistocene, in round terms around a million years ago. Lester still vaguely recalled the lecture he had received from his geologist brother, Ralph, on the occasion of his only visit there just over 20 years ago on a university field trip. At that time it had still been a working quarry and he remembered the towering cliffs of grey limestone that had surrounded a massive hole in the ground. As far as he knew, there were no springs or watercourses that could account for a sudden influx of water into the quarry and according to Roger Dors, it hadn’t rained in the area or anywhere nearby for several days, a fact that was already giving Lester serious misgivings.

The quarry gates were open and they were waved inside by Jack Taylor, one of their caving friends who, together with his wife, Midge, had spent most of their adult lives exploring the caves of the Mendips. They were both active members of the Mendip Cave Rescue Organisation. Since getting together with Lyle and taking up his old university pastime again, Lester had spent a lot of time in their company, and they were people he had the utmost respect for, so the look of concern on Jack’s face was enough to send a prickle of unease down his spine.

Lyle brought the Range Rover to a halt in a spray of gravel outside a ramshackle collection of disused and dilapidated buildings. As far as Lester could remember, the quarry had stopped work not longer after his visit there; having reached the limit of their planning permission in an area that by then had been declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Midge Taylor, a small, whipcord-thin woman in her late 40s was waiting for them, with a scared-looking man some 20 years her junior next to her. Whatever had gone wrong, it was a fair bet that the lad had been trespassing.

“Thanks for coming, Jon,” she said quickly. “I was bloody relieved when Roger told me you and James were in the bar.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Lyle asked, casting a searching glance at the pale-faced young man at her side who was nervously twisting a strand of ginger hair into a ringlet.

“Take a look at something down there, please. Come on, we can drive down to the next level and I can show you what I mean. We’ve got a missing diver. He went into the water an hour and a half ago and hasn’t re-surfaced. This is Billy Pike. It’s his brother Andrew we’re looking for.”

Behind Lester, Julia opened the rear door and Midge Taylor jumped in, followed by Andrew Pike. Lyle drove – at a more sedate pace this time – past the old buildings and down a slope on the left-hand side of the quarry that led to a lower terrace cut out of the hillside. The quarry resembled a giant amphitheatre sloping inwards on all side, with at least four interconnected terraces on the north side and a much steeper, sharper cliff to the south. It was like being in the middle of a gigantic, grey moonscape splattered with occasional patches of green where vegetation clung to the rock faces.

In the bottom of the bowl, sunlight glinted on a large flat expanse of water that reflected both the grey of the rock and the blue of the sky. According to Roger Dors, the water was said to be in the region of 12 metres deep. And he had absolutely no idea where it had come from.

Lyle glanced at him and shrugged as he parked the Range Rover on a flat area overlooking what he presumed was the final terrace. “I don’t remember any watercourses here,” he said, answering Lester’s unspoken question.

“There aren’t,” Midge said. “But this has happened once before, just before the quarry stopped working. I remember Freddy Forrest telling me about it years ago. The water came up out of nowhere and took several weeks to drain away.” She hesitated then said quietly, “According to Freddy it left some bloody funny-looking dead fish behind.”

“What happened to them?” Lester asked, getting what could only be described as a sinking feeling.

“Freddy said the quarry manager stuffed them through the crusher. The management were fighting to extend their permission to work at the time and he didn’t want English Nature getting excited about anything so they kept quiet about it and blamed the water on an oddity in the water table.”

It wasn’t the only oddity there had been in the water table in that area, Lester reflected, knowing Lyle would be thinking the same. A year ago they’d had to contend with a series of water-based anomalies extending from Blagdon Lake on the other side of Mendip to the coast at Weston-super-Mare where millions of gallons of anoxic water – almost wholly devoid of oxygen – had poured through an open anomaly some twenty metres above the surface of the sea, killing fish and bringing with it the risk of an environmental disaster.

“So what was the lad playing at?” Lyle demanded as they made their way down the last part of the terrace to the water’s edge.

“Andrew decided this was a good opportunity to try out his new rebreather,” Midge told him. “They came over last night to take a look then came back this morning with Andrew’s kit. He went into the water at 11.15 and hasn’t been seen since. Billy waited an hour, as they’d agreed, then he initiated the call-out.”

“Was he diving on a line?” Lester asked.

Midge shook her head. “He didn’t see any point. There’s not exactly anywhere to go down there. According to Billy, he just wanted to see if he could find out where the water had come from.”

While they were talking, Lester had gone down on one knee and was staring out across the wide flat expanse of water. The southern side of the quarry was in shadow, but he could just pick out a faint shimmer on the surface of the water. He nudged Lyle and pointed.

The Special Forces lieutenant shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand and looked in the direction Lester was indicating.

After a long moment of silence Lyle muttered, “Oh bloody wonderful. There’s no peace for the wicked, is there?”

“Apparently not,” Lester said. “What are our chances of getting a call through to the ARC from here?”

Lyle glanced at Midge Taylor. “Where did you ring the Hunter’s from?”

“If you stand on a boulder near the main gate there’s a crappy signal, but that’s as good as it gets. What are we dealing with, Jon?”

“I have absolutely no bloody idea,” Lyle said. “But I’ll kit up and take a look. James, I need you to make sure that no one gets near enough to see that…” He pointed at the shimmer of light twisting and turning just above the surface of the water.

Lester shook his head. “If you think you’re going through that by yourself, you’ve got another think coming. I remember what happened when we last had something like this to contend with.”

Lyle sucked in a deep breath, obviously deciding whether to argue or not. The reminder that a Special Forces diver had died on the other side of an underwater anomaly just a couple of weeks before Lyle had joined the project was a low blow, but Lester didn’t care. There was no way he was letting Lyle go into the water without back-up.

“Have it your own way, sweetie,” Lyle said, already starting to strip off. “Mother, I want you to find that boulder and stand on it.” He handed her his mobile phone. “Call the SBS base at Poole, the number’s in my contacts under Marine Boy. Use the command code Black Light. Tell them I want a four-man team helicoptered in here asap. Then call the ARC. Use the same code. You already know their number, but it’s in there under Work. I want Temple on the other end of a phone just in case there’s anything useful he can tell us. Midge, can you get comms set up from here to that boulder?”

While Lyle was rattling off instructions, he was busily getting changed into his diving kit and Lester was doing the same. Unlike Lyle, who was pulling on a one-piece fleece undersuit and a diving dry-suit, Lester only had his caving wet-suit, but that would have to do.

Lyle was using a rebreather system rather than conventional air tanks of the type Lester was now settling around his waist in a twin harness. Lyle’s equipment, like the system used by the missing diver, worked by proving a breathing mix made up of oxygen and recycled exhaled gas. Lester had never used one, but Lyle had been experimenting in his spare time for the past few months and he now believed the one he was about to use would give him up to four hours of dive time. According to Billy Pike, his brother had made similar claims for his own kit. If accurate, that would mean he had in the region of two and a half hours of breathable air left, more if he’d managed to find breathable air.

As they were making their final preparations to enter the water, pulling on fins, spitting in their masks and wiping the saliva around to prevent misting, and making sure that all valves were working, Lester turned to Henry Rossington and said, “If anyone asks, you’re a Home Office consultant. I want the police, the fire service and the press – especially the press – kept well away from here. The call-out will have gone through the police and you can bet that the press will be hot on their heels. They usually are. Drop as many names as you like, and be as objectionable as you like – it always works for me. In fact, get Julia to deal with the press. She’ll have a field day.”

Henry nodded. “I can do objectionable.” He hesitated and then added, “Be careful, both of you.”

Lester nodded and, feeling like a particularly over-burdened fish out of water, waddled to the edge of the terrace and stared down at the dark water. He and Lyle both had powerful diving lights fastened to the sides of their helmets and Lyle was carrying a lightweight reel of thin nylon line that would act like an Ariadne’s thread, to lead them back, even in poor visibility. He’d tied one end off to a large rock and would pay out the rest of the line as they finned through the water. Lester would follow him, keeping one hand on the line at all times. The use of a guideline like that was the big difference between cave-divers and open-water divers. Lester never ceased to marvel at the fact that most divers thought there was nothing wrong with exploring old shipwrecks with no means of finding their way out again if they lost visibility for any reason. The mere idea of it gave him the heebie-jeebies.

They slipped into the water together and Lyle started to swim towards the anomaly, with Lester following him, feeling the hard plastic line slide through his fingers as he finned through the water. It felt warmer to the touch than he had expected, but without Connor’s encyclopaedic knowing of prehistoric eras, Lester had no idea what that might signify.

Rather than conduct an extensive and time-consuming search of the flooded quarry, they intended to work on the assumption that Andrew Pike had succumbed to the same lemming-like tendency that had been the downfall of numerous creatures – and no doubt other human beings as well – since the anomalies had sprung into existence. There was something about their sparkling light that exerted a magnetic influence in more ways than one. As they approached, Lester made a conscious effort to keep his breathing slow and steady: gulping air would only reduce the amount available to him later. Slow and steady was the diver’s maxim when it came to breathing off air-tanks of any sort.

His lights cut through the gloom, picking out the figure of Lyle, swimming slowly in front of him, heading towards the halo of light thrown out by the anomaly that was hanging in the water, twisting and turning in the shadows. Lester had been through an anomaly once before, to the Jurassic, and he knew how dangerous it could be, but in water where they were wholly dependant on their equipment it was even more risky. He clamped his teeth down hard on his mouthpiece to stop it being dragged away by the anomaly’s magnetic field and he could feel the pull on his air tanks as well as he finned as hard as he could through the glittering light and away into the water beyond. From the dark depths of the quarry, shaded from the sunlight by towering cliffs of limestone almost 60 metres high, the transition to clear, blue water was startling, as was the warmth surrounding him. Lester could see Lyle ahead of him, swimming upwards towards the surface, the thin nylon thread acting as his guide and anchor in a strange new world.

Or more likely, a strange old world.

As he swam through the water, Lester stared around seeking any sort of clue to where they might be, although without Connor’s knowledge of past times his chances of identifying anything had to be close to non-existent. He’d spent time – as the soldiers had – in listening to Cutter’s lectures on the subject as often as possible, under the guise of checking their usefulness, when in reality he had actually wanted to know as much as possible about the challenges his team had to face. But it was hard to translate that knowledge into what he now saw around him.

Below him, Lester could make out pale sand, rolled into gentle ripples by the water. Everywhere he looked he could see clumps of wispy green weed and an abundance of brightly-coloured corals clinging to scattered rocks. Something that looked like a large, flat horseshoe with a whip-like tail scooted away underneath him, skimming lightly over the sand and leaving a faint trail behind in its wake. Lester was suddenly aware of the fact that the water around him was teeming with life, but nothing seemed large enough to be threatening, although as soon as that thought crossed his mind an uncomfortable image of piranha fish chose that moment to intrude and remind him that size wasn’t the only indicator of threat levels.

Lyle had reached the surface and was treading water. Lester followed him, the nylon line still held in one hand. As his head came out of the water, Lester stared around, blinking behind the protection of his mask at the hazy light that enveloped him. Clouds covered most of the sky, but behind them Lester could see snatches of smoky blue, shot heavily with pink and purple creating a strange, otherworldly effect. As he reached up to remove the demand valve from his mouth, Lyle’s hand shot out and stopped him. The soldier shook his head vigorously and dragged his index finger across his throat making a signal to indicate that something was bad.

Lyle removed his own mask long enough to say, “Low oxygen and I think the CO2 is high. Keep breathing off the tanks while you’re swimming.” He took another breath from his mask and then added, “Might be all right when you’re not exerting yourself too much, but don’t take any risks.”

Still paying out the line from the reel hanging from his belt, Lyle started to swim in the direction of the shoreline, some 200 metres away. If Andrew Pike had come through the anomaly, the chances were he would have headed in the direction of the land and so they needed to do the same. The landscape ahead of them was as eerily alien as the sky above. Tall trees of a type Lester had never seen outside the pages of the books in the ARC’s now-extensive library were everywhere, interspersed with some of the strangest things he had ever seen in his life. Huge grey columns, looking like nail-less fingers thrusting up from a forest of smaller plants, stood an improbably eight to ten metres in height, smooth-sided and imposing. Other plants that looked like bright green spineless cacti jostled for space with ferns and numerous other things he didn’t recognise and certainly couldn’t put a name to.

From the borderline inhospitable atmosphere and mostly unrecognisable plant life, Lester guessed they had come through to an early phase of the earth’s existence but beyond that he couldn’t hazard much of a guess about when they were. All he knew was that they needed to find the missing diver and get the hell out of here as quickly as possible. If the anomaly closed behind them, he didn’t rate their chances of surviving long here. Fear knotted his stomach and created an urgent need to empty his bladder. Lester grimaced around his gag and kept swimming.

A smaller version of one of the strange, finger-like protrusions was growing close to the waterline. Lyle quickly looped the line reel twice around it and then knelt down to pull off his flippers. Lester did the same. Without needing to exchange any words, they both started to cast around on the sandy shore looking for footprints.

The first prints Lester saw were most certainly not human. Large, flat impressions in the damp sand were everywhere. He was no Stephen Hart when it came to tracking, but he could tell that the creatures had three small toes at the leading edge of their foot followed by four stouter ones, with the tracks appearing deeper where the three smaller toes had dug in to give purchase as they walked. The sand had been scraped away in places and he wondered if that might have been caused by a tail dragging in the soft ground. It looked like there had been a lot of creatures going to and from the water and milling around.

While he searched the ground, Lester took the demand valve from his mouth and slipped his diving mask up on his head. Drawing in a slow breath made it easy to see what Lyle had meant. Although he was drawing the air into his lungs it felt as though he was having to work hard to breathe and almost immediately his chest started heaving, gasping for breath, especially when he tried to move. The heavy tanks around his waist and the effort of walking on the soft ground soon left him breathless and panting. He quickly fell into a routine of taking a few breaths from the gag and alternating that with sucking in the thin air of whatever time they’d ended up in.

A shout from Lyle claimed his attention. Lester spun around and saw the soldier pointing to something in the sand. Running with the tanks hanging at his side was impossible but even without that, the effort of moving in the cloying heat had him sweating into his wetsuit and it must have been worse for Lyle in his gear. When Lester saw what Lyle was pointing at, hope flared inside him. A pair of diving flippers lay discarded in the sand, the way they had left their own behind once they’d come up onto the land.

Andrew Pike had made it through the anomaly alive. Now all they had to do was find him, and on the soft ground, his trail shouldn’t be too hard to follow. The only problem was that the missing diver appeared to have attracted company. Overlaying his footprints were those of the seven-toed tetrapods and some of them had clearly been heading in the same direction.

Lyle jerked his head inland and Lester nodded. They’d come this far so there was no prospect of them backing out now, even though they were armed with nothing more than a diving knife each. As they walked, Lester was mentally revising his standing orders about not keeping weaponry at home…

Movement amongst the strange-looking vegetation caught their attention and by the time Lester had blinked in surprise, Lyle’s knife was already in his hand. Something that looked like a gigantic newt was waddling towards them, pushing its way through a small forest of straggling green stems growing out of the marshy ground. Two small round eyes were set on the top of its head and a smooth brown expanse of skin covered a largely featureless body. A wide slash of a mouth bisected its blunt, rounded head. It looked like a child’s attempt at modelling a newt out of clay.

As Lester stared around him, the whole area suddenly came alive with the creatures, all moving towards them, slowly but purposefully. They varied in size from things no bigger than a small terrier to some that were almost two metres long, standing nearly half a metre high at the shoulder. He forced himself to keep moving. There was no point in staying still and waiting to be surrounded. The tetrapods moved slowly and deliberately, bodies swaying as they walked, their tails moving from side to side in a wide sweep. Lester followed Lyle’s example and unsheathed his knife, its weight comforting in a hand that he was trying hard to stop shaking. He’d faced worse than this in the depths of the Devil’s Crowll, but then he’d been better armed as well.

One of the creatures opened its jaws and lunged at Lyle’s leg. The soldier repelled it with a hard kick under the chin that snapped shut a mouth full of sharp-looking teeth and flipped it over onto its back. Without waiting to see how quickly it managed to regain its feet, they hurried on, still following the trail left behind by Andrew Pike. At his side, Lyle suddenly quickened his pace and Lester saw what had attracted his attention…

Slumped against one of the tall, grey columns was a man wearing a tattered dry-suit, doing his best to kick out at a mass of creatures milling around him. His movements were sluggish and feeble. He was surrounded and terrified in an environment that looked like the product of a fevered imagination. Dark hair was plastered wetly against a pale face. His face-mask was still clutched in one hand and he looked like he was trying to get it back on his head, but lacked the necessary coordination, presumably light-headed from lack of oxygen and confused by the higher levels of CO2. Lester knew from his experiences underground how easy it was to succumb to conditions like that, and Pike had been breathing – or rather attempting to breathe – the atmosphere here for longer than they had.

On the plus side, he was still moving, obviously still alive, although by the look of the blood staining the ground the creatures had contrived to do some damage.

They’d found him. Now they just had to get him back through the anomaly.


	3. Chapter 3

Lyle waded through the mass of low-slung bodies, kicking out as he went, and Lester followed his example. Between them they hauled Andrew Pike upright and Lester did his best to support the terrified man’s weight while Lyle checked how badly injured he was.

The man struggled sluggishly in Lester’s grip, clearly deeply shocked and almost unresponsive. The fact that he was alive at all was probably the most surprising thing. His dry-suit hung off him in tatters, although it did seem to have provided some measure of protection from his attackers. The man’s right leg appeared to have borne the brunt of their attentions. Lester could see pale flesh amidst the wreckage of the suit, streaked with red. The blood ran sluggishly from the wounds, ponding in small, brackish pools on the ground. Lester put out a hand to steady himself against the tall grey – thing – that Andrew Pike had been leaning against but recoiled from the smooth, slimy surface. It felt like a damp mushroom, yielding and slippery. He snatched his hand back, his lip curling in distaste and wiped his fingers on his wetsuit.

After conducting a rapid check of Pike’s breathing apparatus, Lyle pronounced everything to be in working order and quickly strapped the man’s mask back onto his face. If they were lucky, the delivery of better quality air to his lungs would help to reduce his confusion and make it possible for them to get him back through the anomaly.

With Pike’s arms over their shoulders and his weight supported between them, they started on their way back to the shore. The creatures that Lyle had felled with his feet had struggled upright and were starting to move towards them again, undeterred by Lyle’s method of repelling them. When one got too close, its frog-like mouth agape, Lester launched a hard kick and bowled it over, slamming it into one of the bigger ones. That didn’t go down too well with the one it had just crashed into, which snapped hard, taking a chunk of flesh out of a muscular thigh. A moment later, the ground around them turned into a seething mass of tetrapods, all intent on getting a piece of the action.

Andrew Pike moved like a man wading through deep mud. His right leg dragged behind him, leaving a trail of blood in his wake, but fortunately the creatures appeared more intent on their fight than following their original prey. It took both Lester and Lyle to support his weight, but by the time they reached the shoreline, he had started to regain his senses, as though stimulated out of his shock by the sight and feel of fellow human beings amidst an alien and threatening landscape.

Lester gestured at the discarded flippers, wondering what chance they had of Pike being able to swim unaided. Lyle shrugged but picked them up anyway. They eased the injured man into a sitting position and took it in turns to keep him upright while they pulled their own flippers back on and carried out the final checks on their equipment.

Lester did his best to reassure Pike that they were going to get him out of there, but the man seemed unresponsive to his words, although he did turn his head to stare in confusion at his rescuers. Lester ended up simply stroking Pike’s hand and squeezing his shoulder, and was pleased when Pike’s fingers finally flexed against his in a return gesture. Lester took one of the karabiners off his belt and quickly fastened it to a clip on the other man’s chest rig and then ran the diving line through it. Lyle was clearly intending to leave the reel attached to its current anchor and at least this way they would hopefully not lose Pike if they had to let go of him for any reason. As they eased him into the water, Lester clasped Pike’s fingers around the line and was pleased to receive a slight nod in return.

They waded into the water and gradually let it support Pike’s weight. He was going to have trouble swimming, but Lester was reasonably confident that between them they could propel him towards the anomaly. He turned around to glance back at the shore and he experienced a nasty lurch in his stomach as he saw several of the tetrapods waddling down to the water. He wasn’t sure whether they were being followed or whether the creatures were just heading in that direction by coincidence but he didn’t want to hang around long enough to find out.

As soon as he dropped below the surface of the water, Lester immediately scanned the area for threats. They were at their most vulnerable now, with an injured man deep in shock and a cloudy trail of blood behind them in the water. Small fish were everywhere and beneath them on the sea bed Lester could see other larger creatures swimming lazily along the sandy bottom. Something the size and shape of a small blue shark started to take an interest in them. It was mottled golden-brown, with large overlapping scales and a wide, flattened head and long snout. Lester finned hard, propelling Andrew Pike forward with one hand on the back of his rebeather. The ragged holes in his dry-suit had now flooded it with water and that was affecting his buoyancy but they were making forward progress and that was the main thing.

A moment later, his hopes abruptly fell. The anomaly was in sight, sparkling in the water and he could see small fish darting in and out of the shards of light. But, of more concern, was the huge fish circling slowly around in the vicinity of the rip in time. It was about the size of a killer whale, but with a far more massive head tapering gradually to a smaller dorsal fin on its back and then widening again to a rudder-like tail. It was grey-blue in colour and looked to be heavily armoured. Lester doubted their knives would be any defence against an attack from something that massive and as the creature’s jaws widened and snapped at a smaller fish swallowing it whole, Lester caught a glance of a set of formidable teeth.

In front of him, Lyle slid his diving knife out of its sheath. The soldier had never been one to bow to superior force and a six metre-long monstrosity like this wasn’t the worst odds he’d faced, but it would make a formidable opponent. Lester knew without needing to be told that his job would be to get Andrew Pike to safety and leave Lyle to cover their retreat but even so his stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch as he watched his lover calmly let go of the guide line and fin away from them.

Lester grabbed hold of Andrew Pike’s free hand and started to fin as strongly as he could, tugging the injured man along with him. It went totally against the grain to swim on, leaving Lyle behind, but their primary objective was to get Pike to safety, so once again, Lester clamped his teeth down hard on his gag, did his best not to gulp air, and swam on.

Feeling the tug of the magnetic field on his gear, Lester scissored his legs in the water, feeling the burn of his thigh muscles at the unaccustomed movement. He hadn’t dived for months: in fact his only trips that year had been to a flooded quarry over on the eastern end of Mendip when Lyle was first putting his rebreather kit together and then a second dive into Wookey Hole a week later. It had been enough to keep him in practice, but not enough to strengthen the relevant muscles to the point where he could do this sort of thing with the same ease Lyle was demonstrating.

With a last glance at his lover who was twisting in the water with surprising grace but only narrowly evading the jaws of the monstrous fish, Lester turned back towards the anomaly and swam through it, towing Andrew Pike behind him. For a moment he thought that the anomaly’s magnetic pull was preventing him swimming away from it, but then the unwelcome realisation dawned on him that he was failing to pull Pike after him. He tightened his grip on the man’s hand and felt the fingers twitch in his grasp, but now he could definitely feel resistance stopping their progress. He twisted in the water, groping for something on Pike’s harness to give him more purchase without being in danger of pulling on a vital air-hose. He caught hold of one of the straps on Pike’s buoyancy aid and kicked down as hard as he could with his flippers. A sudden jerk told him that he’d been successful against an unknown opponent in the underwater tug-of-war and the pair of them shot upwards.

He knew there was a risk of decompression problems, but Lester had no time to even consider making the relevant calculations. Their dive had been relatively shallow and he estimated that they hadn’t been using their breathing gear for more than about 35 minutes so it was a risk he would have to take. Pike had been breathing a nitrox mix that would reduce his susceptibility to decompression sickness and would just have to take his chance. Lester’s priority was simply to get him out of the water as fast as possible.

His head broke the surface of the water almost immediately and he struck out strongly towards the quarry side where he could see a number of figures milling around, looking like they were in the middle of kitting up. Hands reached down to take Pike from him and haul him out of the water while others did the same for Lester. He reached up and flipped the catch to release his helmet and pull back the neoprene hood of his wetsuit.

“Where’s Jon?” The demand came from Midge Taylor’s voice, her anxiety barely contained.

“He tried to lead something away from us,” Lester gasped. “I need to get back down there…”

“We’ll take it from here,” a man’s voice said calmly.

Lester looked up to find someone in full diving kit staring down at him, a rebreather like Lyle’s on his back and what appeared to be two bulky handguns strapped to each thigh. Whatever the weapons were, they didn’t look like standard issue for police divers so he presumed that the Special Boat Service team that Lyle had demanded had arrived and were about to go into the water.

“Tell me what we’re facing, sir,” the man said. He obviously saw the look of hesitation on Lester’s face as he added quickly “You can assume we know the nature of the project. The Director briefed us while we were in the air.”

“The air’s not great. You’ll be up against things like killer whales and giant newts with too many teeth,” Lester said. “Maybe other stuff as well. Just assume the whole bloody lot of them are hostile. You’ll come up about 200 metres off land. The newt-things can breathe the air and swim as well… I saw some of them follow us into the water. Jon was trying to distract some big bugger…”

“OK, sir.” The man started barking orders and in a matter of moments, he and three others had slipped into the water and were following the diving line back through the anomaly.

The bustle of activity around him simply ceased to exist as Lester dragged laboured breaths into his lungs, fighting against an almost overwhelming feeling of panic. He felt a hand grip his shoulder and Henry Rossington said firmly, “They look like they know what they’re doing, James. They got here five minutes ago by helicopter and were just about to go in after you when we saw your light surfacing.”

“Considering the amount they cost to train, they should be good,” Lester said, his eyes still fixed on the halo of the anomaly. “How’s Julia?”

“In her element,” Henry commented wryly. “And surprisingly calm, so I’m taking that as a good sign. She’s just eaten a rookie reporter from the Western Daily Press for breakfast and is now bossing the police around as well.”

Lester heard the sound of an engine starting and looked around to see a Land Rover driving back up the slope out of the quarry. There would be an ambulance waiting for Andrew Pike up there and no doubt a paramedic crew were about to be treated to a confused babble that would almost certainly be explained away as some form of nitrogen narcosis. Lester wondered what the hell it said about his sense of priorities if he was already dredging up cover stories.

It was clear that he wasn’t going to be allowed to go back into the water, so he reluctantly allowed Henry and Midge to help him out of his gear. An insulated mug was thrust into his hands from somewhere and he gulped gratefully at hot, sweet tea. The quarry was surprisingly devoid of people. It appeared that Julia was doing a good job at keeping everyone out of the front line unless they absolutely needed to be there. He could just see the blades of a helicopter up by the mine buildings and gave silent thanks for Ryan’s forethought in insisting on securing the Director of Special Forces’ blessing for mobilising a team of underwater specialists should an occasion demand more than the combined expertise of Lyle and his lads.

A few brief words by radio with Julia were followed by a longer conversation with Connor, who had somehow been patched into the communications network from the ARC. From the information Lester had been able to impart, Connor declared that Andrew Pike had almost certainly taken a trip to the late Devonion, something like 360 million years ago. Their resident expert identified the enormous whale-like fish as something called a Dunkleosteus and the newt-thing as an Ichthyostega. The names meant bugger-all to Lester, but he just hoped that whatever weaponry the SBS divers had taken with them would prove to be effective against any creatures that stood between them and his lover’s safe return.

Time dragged, and Lester found himself constantly checking and rechecking his watch. By the time the divers had been gone 15 minutes, he had convinced himself that Lyle was dead and so were they. The ambulance taking Andrew Pike to hospital had left the quarry and Midge had reported that although he’d sustained nasty bites to his leg, his injuries were not believed to be life-threatening although – as Lester had predicted – he had been causing concern for his mental state by babbling about monsters.

Henry Rossington’s presence at his side was indefinably reassuring. The man exuded a calm confidence that helped Lester maintain his own composure while he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the water.

“Something’s on the line!” Henry said, dropping to his knees and taking the diving line between his fingers.

Lester’s heart rate jumped uncomfortably in his chest as hope surged in him, only to be dashed a second later when the line suddenly went slack in the water. At his side, Henry swore almost as inventively as Captain Stringer when it became immediately apparent that something had severed the line. Lester barely had time to imagine the worst when a flurry in the water claimed his attention and a helmeted head broke the surface. It wasn’t Lyle, he could tell that immediately, but someone had made it back through…

A moment later, more divers bobbed up and he could see a yellow helmet amidst the four black ones. It looked like everyone was accounted for, including Lyle. He grabbed the radio handset and threw communications protocols to the four winds. “Julia, he’s safe!”

The divers struck out for the edge of the terrace, obviously finning hard. One of the men twisted in the water and dropped back, and a huge blunt head rose out of the water, jaws open in a scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a bad film. One of the other divers rolled onto his back and Lester saw one of the strange, bulky guns gripped in one hand. Instead of firing in the open air, the man dropped down beneath the surface and Lester saw the Dunkleosteus jerk in the water and thrash away.

The first diver had reached the terrace now with Lyle only a couple of metres behind him. Lester and Henry helped haul them out, with Lester automatically checking his lover for injuries. A long tear in one leg of Lyle’s dry-suit spoke volumes for some kind of close contact and he was wearing only one flipper. But he was alive, and that was what mattered.

The three remaining divers reached the edge of the terrace and were dragged as quickly as possible out of the water. Masks were removed and gear dumped onto the ground, with everyone moving automatically back from the water’s edge. None of them knew whether the Dunkleosteus had survived its encounter with the SBS divers but no one wanted to take any chances.

“Jesus, Jon,” Lester said quietly. “I am never watching Shark Attack 3 again.”

Lyle grinned at him. “You’ve been looking for an excuse to say that ever since I bought it.” He turned to the leader of the SBS team and held out his hand. “Thanks, mate.”

The diver clasped his hand and hauled Lyle to his feet. “Don’t mention it. The call came in just as I was about to fold the worst poker hand of my life. You saved me twenty quid, so the pleasure’s all mine.” He glanced back at the dark waters in the quarry with the faint light of the anomaly still shining above the water. “You guys get all the bloody fun. That was fucking amazing.” The man grinned at Lester. “Captain Colin Bristow at your service, sir. Any time you get one of these in water we’d love to come out to play again.”

Lester rolled his eyes. He was firmly convinced that every member of the Special Forces he had ever met were total adrenalin junkies. “I’ll remember that, Captain. I’d like to hope we won’t have the need to take you up on that, but unfortunately life never seems to be quite that simple.”

At his side, Midge Taylor offered the radio handset to Lyle. “Your mother wants a word, Jon.”

Lyle took the handset and depressed the talk button. “Mother dearest, I know exactly what you can buy me for Christmas… It’s a nifty little bit of kit called an HK P11. I bet they do mail order…”

Henry Rossington exchanged an amused glance with Lester. “That’s a relief,” he murmured. “I had a nasty feeling he was about to ask for the helicopter.”

“He will once he sees it,” Lester said. “He’s a demanding little sod. I’ll be getting the bill for some replacement diving gear as well.”

“You love me really,” Lyle commented, pressing a cold, wet kiss against Lester’s lips.

Lester sighed theatrically. “Yes, my little swamp rat, I love you really.”

* * * * *

The anomaly closed an hour after their return. Lester had no idea how long it would take for the water to drain away, but not knowing what had been left behind, he was intending to take no chances. One curious sightseer had been quite enough. A small military contingent sent by Ryan had taken up residence in one of the disused offices and would ensure that no one got anywhere near the place until any evidence left behind by the water had been discreetly disposed of.

The adrenalin had gone from Lester’s system, leaving him feeling slightly sick and very tired. In contrast, Lyle and Julia were remarkably perky and insisted on calling into the Hunter’s on the way back to Drove Cottage. Lester and Henry had rolled their eyes but allowed themselves to be over-ruled and a large whisky and some hot food went a long way to restoring Lester’s equilibrium.

When they finally made it back to the cottage, with Henry behind the wheel of the Range Rover, Julia promptly poured another round of drinks and declared, “Well, that was better than therapy for taking my mind off things.”

Lyle flopped down on the settee, cradling his drink. “Mother, before you ask, no we do not need an ex-journalist on the staff of the ARC. I don’t think my delicate nerves would survive a ‘Take your parent to work day’.

Lester allowed a smile to quirk his lips. “Well, honey possum, you have to admit that Claudia is much overdue for a holiday… And we can hardly get a temp in from an agency, now can we?”

Lyle’s eyes widened in horror. “James…”

“Yes, dibbler?”

“Dibbler?”

“Dibbler,” Lester said firmly. “Parantechinus apicalis to be precise. An inhabitant of the southwest mainland of Western Australia, dear boy.” He ruffled Lyle’s hair. “You really shouldn’t have left that list of monotremes and marsupials of Australia bookmarked on your phone.”

Lyle glared at his mother. “That’s the last time I’m letting you near my bloody phone. I hate the pair of you.”

Julia blew her son a kiss, drained her glass and held it out for a refill.

She looked tired, but the haunted look had left her eyes and when her husband perched on the arm of the chair, she leaned against him rather than shying away. Henry slipped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

Lyle reached up and tugged Lester down onto the sofa with him, pulling him into a whisky-tasting kiss. “I never did get around to working out what a bloody monotreme was,” he murmured regretfully.


End file.
